


Her

by tarinumenesse



Series: Lone Moon [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Background Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit |Blyeth, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Revenge, Survivor Guilt, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-21
Updated: 2019-08-21
Packaged: 2020-09-23 00:04:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20330746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tarinumenesse/pseuds/tarinumenesse
Summary: Dimitri’s punishment is life. The ghosts that haunt him will not let him forget until he completes the task that they have given him.





	Her

They wailed all night long. Dimitri tossed on the bed, groaning.

‘I’m sorry,’ he begged. ‘Forgive me. Please forgive me.’

‘You’re pathetic,’ Glenn said. ‘You know what you need to do.’

Dimitri opened his eyes and saw his friend looking down at him. But he did not appear as he usually did during his visits. His skin was grey, his face sunken with the rot of death. His eyes were dark and blank.

‘My promise stands as it always did,’ Dimitri said.

‘Then why are you still here?’ Glenn asked. ‘Countless moons have passed since you left Faerghus. And she is still alive!’

‘Get up.’

Lambert grabbed Dimitri’s arm and yanked him from the bed. Dimitri fell to his knees on the hard floor. He cowered there at his father’s feet.

‘You do not seem to understand our anguish. What we went through!’

‘I took a blade intended for you, Your Highness,’ Glenn said. The bitterness in the delivery of Dimitri's honorific caused shame to burn through his bones. ‘You did nothing while I lay there in a pool of my own blood. You let her get away. You were selfish, as ever.’

Dimitri’s eyes were drawn up towards the gaping wound in Glenn’s chest. It was dry of blood now, but Dimitri could hear air rattling through it and Glenn’s stagnant lungs.

Dimitri scrambled across the floor, gently grasping Glenn’s ankles in a gesture of atonement.

‘Forgive me,’ Dimitri said. He did not know when he had started crying, but his tears fell onto Glenn’s feet. ‘I didn’t know what to do, I…’

Glenn kicked Dimitri away.

‘Remember the way you quashed that rebellion?’ Lambert said. ‘The way you slit their throats, ran them through…you cared nothing for life or them. It was beautiful.’

Dimitri curled up against the bed. ‘I dreamed about it for months afterwards,’ he whispered.

‘Because you are weak,’ Lambert accused, a finger jabbing the air. ‘That is why you still sit here, like the selfish, lazy traitor you are. Your weakness has brought this on your own head.’

Dimitri closed his eyes.

‘For a whole year, she studied beside you in these very halls,’ Glenn said in a whisper. ‘She pretended to be your friend. Pretended to be innocent. Is that why you cannot bring yourself to complete your charge?’

Dimitri covered his ears, desperate to escape.

Dimitri was in Duscur. He wondered why he had come here again. Even though he was much changed from the boy he had been, the memories were still tender. They cast a shadow despite the blue sky overhead and the stillness of the landscape around him.

‘Dimitri.’

He turned and saw Edelgard standing there. She wore the uniform of the Officers Academy, her red cape gently moving in the breeze. She smiled brightly as she reached behind her back.

‘I have a gift for you,’ she said.

Dimitri retched as Edelgard lifted Dedue’s head high.

‘Isn’t it lovely?’ Edelgard chuckled. ‘I have such a collection already, I thought you might like one too.’

As she cackled a fire began to spread. Smoke swiftly filled the air around him until Dimitri choked on the taste and smell. He looked at Edelgard through the haze and saw that she had changed into the armour of the Flame Emperor. Her true identity. Her true face.

‘Dimitri!’

The shriek of his stepmother rang in his ears. Dimitri ran from Edelgard, searching through the burning buildings. The weak wooden structures collapsed around him.

He found his father lying beneath a large wooden beam. Dimitri collapsed to his knees beside him and pushed at the beam, grunting with the effort it took to move it. When it finally fell away, his hands were coated red, soaked by the blood pouring from the enormous gash across Lambert’s lower torso. Dimitri tried to press the edges of the wound together as though he could mend the flesh with his will alone. But he was useless. He could do nothing.

‘My boy,’ Lambert said, lifting his hand to Dimitri’s face in a fatherly gesture. But his touch wasn’t gentle. He grabbed Dimitri’s chin, forcing him to meet his eyes. ‘You must kill them. You live, and so this is your task now. You must wipe them all from the face of this land. If you do not, you will never rest. You will be damned for all eternity.’

‘Save me, Dimitri!’

Dimitri looked up, renewing his search for his stepmother. But it was not her he saw. Byleth stood before him in the robes that she had worn when teaching. She did not even have a weapon. And she just stood there, staring at him, as Edelgard strolled up behind her.

‘Don’t touch her!’ Dimitri screamed as Edelgard rested a hand on Byleth’s shoulder.

Edelgard smiled at him. Byleth choked as she was impaled on Edelgard’s sword. The tip emerged from her chest. Just like Dedue. He would lose her just like Dedue. Blood began to drip from her lips. Still she stared at Dimitri, devoid of all emotion even at the moment of her death.

Dimitri gasped. He was sitting on the professor’s bed in the early light of morning, sweat covering his body. His limbs still shook with the terror of the dream.

‘Professor,’ he mumbled. Dimitri had slept in her room, desperate for some connection to her. Perhaps that had been a mistake.

‘She was there?’ Glenn said. ‘She’s never been there before.’

Dimitri swung his head in the direction of Glenn’s voice. He was sitting on the desk, dressed neatly in his knight’s uniform and picking absently at his fingernails. His face was thin but filled with life.

Dimitri sighed as he ran his hand through his hair, pulling on the strands so that there was some physical pain to reflect the anguish in his chest. Why was he so inept, so worthless? Why couldn’t he stop any of it from happening?’

‘You know what you have to do, princeling,’ Glenn said. ‘Her voice is also crying out for revenge. Crush the weakness in you.’

Glenn gestured to the lance that leaned against the wall near the door of the room.

‘You still behave like a child. A true man would seek his revenge.’

Dimitri pushed himself off the bed and crossed the room. He lifted the lance, testing its weight in his hands.

It was a weapon Dimitri had stolen from a Kingdom soldier he killed in the first weeks hiding in the monastery. The woman had recognised him. She had been on the verge of calling the rest of her company when Dimitri knocked her down and wrapped his hands around her throat.

It was something he had tried to put out of his mind. Her wide, frightened eyes and death gasp. He hadn’t known if she was friend or foe. But he had killed her and taken the weapon from her corpse.

Nor had she been the last of his compatriots who had met that fate in the moons since. Dimitri had turned on his own people. His hands were dripping with the blood of men and women who had once swore allegiance to him. He was already lost.

‘This will only continue until you do what is required of you,’ Glenn said.

Dimitri squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the soldier’s face from his mind. He saw the professor reaching out for him. He pushed her hands away.

‘Think only of her and what she did,’ Glenn breathed.

The rage began to curdle as Dimitri imagined her before him. Edelgard. She had been his sister and his friend, but she had betrayed him in every way possible. She had no qualms about killing him – that had been proven in the attempts on his and Claude’s lives while at the Academy. Why should he hesitate to deal to her what she deserved?

‘You must begin. It is time to go hunting.’

Dimitri opened his eyes. The words had been spoken by him.

And so he knew.

Dimitri glanced around the room. There were things here and there that belonged to him, haphazardly discarded the night before when he returned to the monastery. He put down the lance and collected everything back into the bag he had carried on his escape from Fhirdiad. Throwing it over his shoulder, Dimitri opened the door and took the lance in hand.

He paused. There was part of him that did not want to leave.

That part was his weakness.

Dimitri stepped out of the room and closed the door. For a moment his hand rested on the handle.

‘I will spill her blood, and the blood of anyone who defends her, across the streets of Enbarr,’ he swore.

Dimitri turned his back and left.

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place about eight months after the events of Fabric of the Mind. Although Dimitri is driven by the ghosts and his guilt, he must have made a conscious decision at some point to turn completely to revenge. This is my imagining of that moment, driven by the appearance of Byleth in his nightmares for the first time.


End file.
